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Christ the Lord was tempted and suffered for us. Come, let us adore him.Or: O that today you would listen to his voice: harden not your hearts.

Year: C(I). Psalm week: 4. Liturgical Colour: Violet.

Saint Francis of Paola (1436 - 1507)

He was born in Paola in Calabria. He founded an order of hermits which later became the Order of Minims (“minimi,” meaning “least,” because they were to be the least of the religious orders). He died on Good Friday, 2 April 1507, at Plessis in France. See the article in the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Other saints: St John Payne (c.1550-1582)

2 Apr

Brentwood: 6 May

John Payne (or Paine) was born in Peterborough into a Church of England family but in his early adult life became a Catholic. He went to the English College at Douai in 1574 and was ordained priest in 1576; the short time he was at the college may suggest that he had studied theology elsewhere. He returned to England in the company of Cuthbert Mayne (1st December). He went to Essex where he stayed at the home of the Petre family in Ingatestone Hall. From here he ministered to local Catholics, while apparently working as an estate steward. In 1577 he was imprisoned for a short time, afterwards returning briefly to Douai. He came back to Essex and continued working as a priest until in 1581 he was once again arrested. He was imprisoned at Greenwich, being charged with conspiracy against the Queen, was racked in the Tower, and was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. He denied the evidence brought against him completely, stating at his trial “that he always, in mind or word, honoured the queen’s majesty above any woman in the world; that he would gladly always have spent his life for her pleasure in any lawful service; that he prayed for her as for his own soul; that he never invented or compassed any treason against her majesty, or any of the nobility of England.” He was executed at Chelmsford on 2 April. He was so well known and respected in the neighbourhood that the crowd compelled the hangman to wait until he was dead before cutting him down.

DK

Other saints: Blessed Pedro Calungsod (- 1672)

Philippines

He was a teen-aged native of the Visayas region of the Philippines, one of the boy catechists who went with some Spanish Jesuit missionaries from the Philippines to the Ladrones Islands – later renamed “Marianas” – in the western Pacific in 1668, to evangelize the Chamorros. On 2 April 1672, while helping Fr Diego Luis de San Vitores, the rector of the Mission, to recover a runaway servant and to perform some baptisms at the village of Tomhon on the Island of Guam, he was killed by two natives for being a Christian, for catechizing the Chamorros and for helping in the administration of the Sacrament of Baptism. His body was thrown into deep ocean together with that of the rector, who was also killed after him.

He was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 21 October 2012.

About the author of the Second Reading in today's Office of Readings:

Second Reading: Pope St Leo the Great (- 461)

Leo was born in Etruria and became Pope in 440. He was a true shepherd and father of souls. He constantly strove to keep the faith whole and strenuously defended the unity of the Church. He repelled the invasions of the barbarians or alleviated their effects, famously persuading Attila the Hun not to march on Rome in 452, and preventing the invading Vandals from massacring the population in 455.

Leo left many doctrinal and spiritual writings behind and a number of them are included in the Office of Readings to this day. He died in 461.

40 Days and 40 Ways: Tuesday, 4th week of Lent

Wherever the river flows, all living creatures teeming in it will live. Fish will be very plentiful, for wherever the water goes it brings health, and life teems wherever the river flows. (Ez 47:9)

Ez 47:1-9, 12

It is almost unbelievable. The prophet is standing on the parapet of the Temple, looking eastwards across the Valley of the Kedron to the Mount of Olives. Look towards the right, and all you see is a heat haze, going off into the distance, where you know is the Dead Sea, barren, dust ridden, salty and smelling of noxious chemicals. But now, under the prophet’s feet and to his right is flowing a stream, which every five hundred metres is found to be half-a-metre deeper until the prophet is out of his depth and cannot cross. There are burgeoning fruit trees on either side where there should be nothing but desert, and even the stinking Dead Sea is surrounded by lines of eager fishermen. Such is the water of life which the prophet sees will flow from the Temple.

Jesus does not need to wait for the water to flow out from the Temple. Flowing down into the Temple from the higher ground to the north is the water of the Pool of Five Porticoes, where Jesus himself gives a full life to the sick man lying neglected for thirty eight years.

The Gospel reading of the day is Jn 5:1-3, 5-16.

Action:

Visit someone who has no relative to cheer them up.

Dom Henry Wansbrough

This passage is an extract from the booklet “40 Days and 40 Ways” by Dom Henry Wansbrough OSB, published by the Catholic Truth Society and used by permission. “40 Days and 40 Ways” has meditations for each day in Lent. To find out more about the booklet, or to buy it, please visit the CTS web site.

Shout for all you are worth, raise your voice like a trumpet. Proclaim their faults to my people, their sins to the House of Jacob. They seek me day after day, they long to know my ways, like a nation that wants to act with integrity and not ignore the law of its God.